Recent comments

  • Wiki on it here.

    It's a bill to remove the 180 "complaint" time window when one discovers they are getting the shaft on wages and being discriminated against. SCOTUS had ruled that the 180 complaint time window, or statute of limitations applies from the 1st paycheck that wage discrimination occurred and the bill changed that to the last paycheck issued.

    It's a good bill and Obama did sign it, but there is a long way to go for women and sex discrimination.

    I've overviewed poverty statistics and the one thing that has really stood out are single mothers. It's like the financial kiss of death to have a child and for whatever reason "dear Dad" is out of the picture. Employers discriminate against single mothers because OMG they need to also take care of their kids. That needs to change.

    Romney's answer that we should have "two parent" families is all fine, that's true, but there is a problem here in that a woman may not want to be married to some guy for whatever reason and that really shouldn't harm her economically for being a single parent.

    Single Dads are not anywhere near as bad off as single Moms either.

    Reply to: As Our Economy is Outsourced to China the Obama Administration Once Again Does Nothing   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Bob, efforts by Programmer's Guild have been stopped by
    Superior, Appeals and Supreme Courts in attempt after attempt. Yeah, I would say, corrupt.

    Reply to: Displacing American Labor Through Foreign Guest Worker Visas   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • "
    I want our legal system to work better. I want it to be streamlined, I want it to be clearer. I don’t think you have to — shouldn’t have to hire a lawyer to figure out how to get into this country legally. I also think that we should give visas to people — green cards, rather, to people who graduate with skills that we need, people around the world with accredited degrees in — in science and math get a green card stapled to their diploma, come to the US of A. We should make sure that our legal system works.
    "

    The more you read this quote, the worse it looks.

    Reply to: Displacing American Labor Through Foreign Guest Worker Visas   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • The phrase "staple a Green Card to every diploma" was used. The worst thing about O and Mittens, is how they both trip over each other to kiss the asses of the MNC immigration lobbies that fill Congress's halls.

    Reply to: Displacing American Labor Through Foreign Guest Worker Visas   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Obama did sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act for women that allows women to receive equal pay for equal work.

    Reply to: As Our Economy is Outsourced to China the Obama Administration Once Again Does Nothing   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • another element these lobbyists like to do is say once a green card is awarded, the guest worker Visa the worker is currently on can be "returned" and used again, even though this "reuse" exceeds the current fiscal year cap.

    It's unclear if this bill will slip in a recapture clause but odds are they will try it. It has no salary test, no U.S. worker is available for the job test.

    Current legislative text appears to not have Visa recapture, but that means nothing.

    I sincerely doubt as the bill text stands now that's how it will pass. The infamous manager's amendment is something the public doesn't get to read, as to many Senators and often rewrites bills after the fact and is the last amendment vote, often by voice, before final passage of the bill.

    Now all of this said, this bill is WAY superior to the agenda to turn universities into a green card ATM, no doubt about it. That is a real disaster but bottom line, there isn't a single piece of legislation taking on global labor arbitrage period and that would entail requiring everything in the nation-state, jobs, education, put the citizens as preferred for those jobs, education.

    What is the point of a nation-state anyway if the citizens are last in line for opportunities, education, jobs, staring businesses, innovation and so on in their own country?

    That's what's going on here and frankly, people do not pull innovation or patents out of their ass. To get to that point, people need support, deep education, funding, all sorts of elements to make that happen. It's also cultural. Americans have paid a lot of taxes for those supports, yet in terms of reaping the reward, right now it's "anyone but an American" even though the point of public universities receiving taxpayer funds is to educate citizens of the state.

    Reply to: Displacing American Labor Through Foreign Guest Worker Visas   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • with plans to try to sneak in more H-1Bs and more green cards has a host of bills with plans to pass in the lame duck.

    HR 3012 is the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2011

    Which removes the limits or per country quotas on green cards. Napal uses few green cards, India, as an example since they focus on BPO services, on the other hand will import as many "tech" workers as possible. Employer sponsored green cards, by removing the quotas per country, means these corporations can snatch up green cards destined for Africa, Europe, Canada and so on. There goes diversity and there gives India, where 7% of GDP relies on technology transfer of U.S. services and U.S. jobs, a truly unfair comparative advantage by manipulation of the U.S. immigration system.

    This is a back door increase for this means India can send over way more tech workers and frankly what difference does it make, a green card or a guest worker Visa, labor substitution is native worker displacement regardless of vehicle or method.

    This will simply be yet another foreign worker importation method via the India BPO industry and this statement acknowledges that a green card is superior to a guest worker Visa simply because the worker has more rights and freedoms.

    The backlogs are one of the tricks to which reduces the flood of workers targeting U.S. jobs and also blunts the technology transfers out of the U.S. to some degree.

    What should be happening is a strong limiting of green cards and issuance not on country quotas but on fee bidding wars for any corporate sponsored green card, which is what this bill is referring to and hence the title.

    If a employee is so critical then assuredly a large corporation can cough up $20k or bid on green cards to get a green card for that person. Seriously, a security clearance for 1 person is $20k, the lowest level, secret. There is no reason for large corporations simply to pay up and thus guarantee this worker really is critical and needs a green card.

    There should be a limit of employer sponsored green cards and additionally corporations should be required to bid on those cards.

    If employer sponsored green cards won't bid on the ones available, now that says quite a bit about the critical nature of that employee and perhaps, instead, that corporation should be hiring someone who is already here and needs a job.

    legal permanent resident status should be limited and it should be costly. Else, by removing the per country green card quota caps, one introduces yet another method of immigration manipulation for the purposes of labor arbitrage.

    Reply to: Displacing American Labor Through Foreign Guest Worker Visas   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Robert is absolutely wrong about H.R.3012.

    This bill is all about, giving green card in a first come first server basis, without changing the total number of green cards provided by US.

    Reply to: Displacing American Labor Through Foreign Guest Worker Visas   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Corporate lobbyists are after more H-1B Visas and a really super bad idea, to turn our educational system into a green card machine. They completely ignore the facts and even spin the statistics on patents....all to labor arbitrage STEM occupations per the demands of Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, HP and notice these same companies have laid off thousands, literally thousands at a time, U.S. citizen STEM.

    Doing this will throw thousands of U.S. citizens with STEM occupational areas out of their careers. It will also squeeze further, U.S. citizens even getting into college and deny them career choices, opportunities.

    Both parties will do this because these corporate lobbyists are paying both parties to sell out U.S. citizens and they are happy to oblige. Why? Because U.S. STEM employment is only about 8 million and that is not enough voters to sway an election or even a district!

    What is true, since you're on the left I suspect, is the AFL-CIO, in particular the DPE and the teamsters are fighting against this but as well know Democrats blow off unions too.

    About the only hope is to have voters, citizens, shut down the Congressional communication systems and call, write, email, fax their representatives to stop this insanity.

    So, on this issue for us, it's nonpartisan, we have Senators Bernie Sanders to Chuck Grassley trying to stop this, yet when it comes to both parties, Congressional leadership and Presidential politics they both are hell bent on selling out U.S. professionals for their corporate donor class.

    When overviewing policies and there are three posts here at the moment that are "hot topics" of the Presidential election, I dig out facts, statistics but do my best to give equal slams as we find the statistical spin.

    On this topic, we have no friends except a few brace Congressional representatives and Senators and as we all know, most of Congress is on the perfectly legal take.

    Right now, they are planning on passing HR 3012, which is another, more subtle plan sell immigration via EB-3, or green cards and this also will labor arbitrage U.S. engineers.

    Reply to: Displacing American Labor Through Foreign Guest Worker Visas   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • It was also HORRIFIC in terms of their treatment of the actual people there with these planted questions. The focus was clearly not on them and that was supposed to be the point of a townhall. So, they both lost because they might as well put a mud pit in the room, watered these guys down with fire hoses and let them have at it. About as much accurate information too.

    Both lied about the need for more foreign STEM, refusing to acknowledge the labor arbitrage, unemployment of U.S. citizen STEM and what that is doing to America's advanced R&D community. It is international and always has been, but now they are displacing U.S. citizens in favor of foreigners and that...is a disaster. It originally was "in addition to", there would never be a situation where an American would be labor arbitraged and displaced by a foreigner and as anyone can imagine, that pits advanced worker against advanced worker and destroys teams, destroys job security and completely ruins environments which just cannot have these kind of labor arbitrage games to be effective.

    Right now they are declaring Obama the winner and I'm thinking, really? It was clear, America is and will be the loser. Anyway, I thought they both came across bad not that I think that matters. What people want are sane economic policy.

    Good example is a woman pointed out sex discrimination by the fact women still are making @ 73% in comparison to a man and they both bypassed that fact, although Romeny, surprise, surprise, talked about hiring women...which does happen to be the key, uh, they need the jobs with the corresponding salaries to stop economic sex discrimination. ;)

    Ok, here is also a great example of ridiculous "gotchas". They are focused on Romney say "binders full of women" and trying to spin that. It was clear Romney was pointing out he found thousands of qualified candidates who were women.

    What's the bottom line on sex discrimination? Getting hired plus keeping the job in high positions with high salaries. That's what needs to happen and in 2012 it has not. There are a host of other issues but if you asking about unequal pay for same work, the solution is to make sure we get equal pay for the same work plus women hired extensively in top level employment positions.

    Ok, so out in twitter land and other noise machines, the fact that women and also U.S. domestic minorities, blacks have been wiped out economically, on jobs and on and on.

    Romney clearly doesn't get that single women need jobs and support for kids, way more than what is going on. That's where his sexism came in. But is team Obama doing anything for single mothers? Uh, no, millions more thrown into poverty because they are single with kids, something that should be commended and they should get help and support on raising those kids.

    So....ugh. Good example of who just lost that debate is single moms trying to raise their kids!

    Be glad I don't put up a post on it and the reason is I'm with you, who can keep up with the noise when it's facts and policy that matter.

    Reply to: As Our Economy is Outsourced to China the Obama Administration Once Again Does Nothing   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • No need to watch two self-serving narcissists aka politicians to figure out what they have done, are doing, and will do. They will serve the people with the money that bankroll them, they will help their friends and family and cronies at all costs, including sacrificing the electorate, and they will lie and promise everything and anything to anyone that can help them get elected. And then they will proceed to break every promise when it suits them and lie about what they actually said and promised, even when confronted with taped testimony, transcripts, and DNA evidence. Did I get it right? And I just saved myself the pain of watching it and showing interest in a puppet show that only has one result - we're screwed by someone from a party with red as its color or blue, but with neither one caring about the average American and his/her suffering, work ethic, education, skills, and loss of hope in the American Dream.

    Reply to: As Our Economy is Outsourced to China the Obama Administration Once Again Does Nothing   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • The primary goal of republicans is to favor big businesses and allow Wall Street to "still" everyone else's money (it is true that for the big investors to win the smaller investors have to lose), not necessarily small businesses. The small businesses will generally remain small because the big ones will not let them grow. And the big ones are the ones who maintain the republicans in their seats.
    We must let democrats gain full power of the executive and legislative for them to favor the majority of people.. remember Labor laws exist to protect employees.. and that is a democratic principle.. not a republican one. The republican idea that just lowering taxes on businesses will create jobs is preposterous.. They know jobs will not be created that way.. People have been losing their jobs to H1B/L1 excessive influx... People have been losing their jobs because the financial system almost collapsed due to the greed of just a few people who knew how to systematically (through complicated financial products... pure paper) still the money from a great number of people. These individuals are the small percentage the republicans want to make you believe are going to self-regulate. These are the companies that have been replacing well qualified US Citizens with H1B/L1 individuals they outsourced the jobs to.
    It is time to stop (at least slow down significantly) these programs until the unemployed get hired again. If there is one qualified US Citizen here in the US that is unemployed, there should not be one H1B/L1 application approved.. Why, because that qualified US Citizen spent his american money to get educated here in the US, and that individual will spend all his salary here in the US, by living here and educating his/her children here and consuming everything that is sold here in the US, whether produced here or imported, but sold here at the domestic price, and who will obtain a mrtgage to obtain the american dream.

    Reply to: Displacing American Labor Through Foreign Guest Worker Visas   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • The second Presidential debate just concluded and this post is most timely to show, statistically, Obama just told a bunch of statistical fibs.

    Also, U.S. engineers are the most highly trained in the world and they are being subject to labor arbitrage. We do not need "retraining" for PhDs, Masters and Bachelors with highly specialized skills. We need for this government to put their citizenry first in all things. That is educational opportunities financial support and most critical are secure, stable, long term, economically rewarding careers.

    Reply to: As Our Economy is Outsourced to China the Obama Administration Once Again Does Nothing   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • I should say the reason I went with the annual averages is smoothing. I did not want to run seasonal adjustments for there are unique elements to those adjustments per subject and in this case it appears by age as well.
    The goal was to remove as much seasonality as possible to show the real trend.

    Employment is amazingly seasonal and different age groups have different levels of seasonality. This is scary actually since to survive we need full time, full year round jobs.

    Ages 16-19 are extremely seasonal and reflected in labor participation rates.

    After I ran these numbers I was actually surprised at the labor participation rates of those over age 65. I think that's a combination of the new reality "work till you drop" and also people are simply more healthy, more able bodied these days and are perfectly capable of working this long.

    Reply to: A Word on Labor Participation Rates   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Techinsurgent.com covers this exclusively as far as lawsuits, companies, individuals, politicians that are "American" but serve foreign masters, etc. That's one example. And forums out there giving voice to the unemployed also name names. There was one bank that made it impossible to say you were from the US. Basically the default for a US citizen trying to apply for a job was forced to say their location was in India. Obviously an American in the US would give up after 5 seconds of trying to figure out how to say he/she was not in India, but still wanted the job being listed in the US. But of course the bank could say no one was applying or qualified from the US. HR, if you engage in these acts on behalf of your bosses, will your bosses protect you when you are called to account by the one or two honest lawmakers out there? No, of course you won't. "It was a rogue HR employee" they will claim despite 10,000 emails and docs proving otherwise. Is this tricky? No. Dickish, yes! And no doubt that same bank was collecting secret Fed funds paid for by US-taxpayers. Quite the nightmare of lies, deception, and immoral/illegal conduct. And par for the course.

    Reply to: Displacing American Labor Through Foreign Guest Worker Visas   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Thanks for the excellent data analysis, Robert.

    Participation rates or employment-population rates are my go-to for judging the economy, since the headline unemployment number deliberately undercounts millions.

    It should be COMMON SENSE that the 2008 cliff-dive in employment-population was not caused by gradual changes in demographics.

    It should be COMMON SENSE that boomers who saw their retirement savings take a hit in the 2001 and 2008 recessions did not win the lottery and retire early. To the contrary, they're working longer to make up for inadequate retiremnent funding, as your charts illustrate.

    Reply to: A Word on Labor Participation Rates   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • Labor laws are there to protect the employees from the abuses employers tend to commit (if unchecked), simply because the employer feels like they are the master and the employees are the servants.
    These laws are also there to make sure that US Citizens take precedence over foreigners brought under the false pretense that there is shortage of technical resources here in the US. Middle easterner companies have seen and ceased the opportunity to flood the US with less qualified and excessive numbers of falsely stated H1B supporting documentation (I knew a few middle easterners IT programmers in the ERP world who confided that they were not IT trained but accountants who were brought here by their relatives once they formed companies here in the US). This is happening all over the US. It is widely known that there is a flood of inaccurate resumes (I also knew cases where the interviewed persons were not the same people that showed up for work). It is how it works over there and that culture is being brought here to the US.
    Companies like Infosys, Tata and the thousands of like those (smaller) companies that are being created almost every day (under the false claims that they are "leading global companies - when their website has just been created with WordPress) have started to feel the pressure because the level of unemployment of US Citizens is growing because of them, since they tend to place their people first regardless of whether there are qualifying US Citizens to fill the positions at their companies here in the US or for the clients that prefer to hire non Americans first because they have been sold the idea that middle easterner are better technically trained (or simply they are willing to work for less).
    Now that some of our politicians and some government organizations have started to slow down the speed to approval f H1B/L1 applications, they have sent mandates to those companies executives to start hiring more US Citizens so they maintain control of the labor force they have been building here in the US.
    I get calls from some of these companies who claim they are in the US, but they are actually calling from overseas.
    It its time to identify these companies and pass the information to the DOL. We have to let our politicians that the H1B/L1 programs are killing our jobs at this time. Perhaps at another time, they may be useful, but not now, when we are at this high level of unemployment.

    Reply to: Displacing American Labor Through Foreign Guest Worker Visas   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • We should also mention there is evidence the Chinese buying up foreign debt isn't just with U.S. Treasuries, they also buy up a lot of Euro debt. An analysis by Bloomberg, (subscription only, here) shows the Chinese have reduced their holdings of foreign bonds and that could cause the Euro to decline in value relative to the U.S. dollar and the sovereign debt crisis will come alive once more.

    I'm not sure if this analysis picks up on China buying sovereign bonds through the U.K., so their reserves are hidden from the reported figures.

    This posts focuses on trade and labor,after all, that's our middle class bread and butter. That said, I hope to dig into how China's currency manipulation affects sovereign debt, bond prices and exchanges rates.

    Reply to: As Our Economy is Outsourced to China the Obama Administration Once Again Does Nothing   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • "There is no "cost of labor after taxes" because labor is a TAX DEDUCTION." -- Robert Oak

    While I agree with pretty much everything you said, and even after this do not agree with "Masked Defender"'s comment, I'm not sure what you above said is an accurate reflection of what Masked Defender said.

    Masked Defender didn't say "cost of labor after taxes", but instead used two separate categories, (a) cost of labor and (b) after-tax profit. The line of thought Masked Defender and the GOP is using is that if after-tax profit is reduced, business will be less likely to engage in new business ventures and therefore less hiring. Again, just different from saying "cost of labor after taxes". Unless I missed something about Marked Defender's post that caused you to use that wording.

    "Why work if you can live well not working?" -- Masked Defender

    Total disconnect from reality right there.

    Reply to: Tax Facts Show Lower Personal Income Taxes Will Not Create Jobs   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:
  • More economists and others who do pour over these statistics the same as we do. I've been reading the claim the low labor participation rates are due to aging population for some time and it does take awhile to crunch these numbers, believe me, that's a lot of graphs and data series breakdown to do the above using just Excel.

    But these people can easily obtain quickly the labor participation rates of those between the ages of 25-54, monthly and seasonally adjusted. It's fallen roughly two full percentage points from before the Great Recession and when dealing with ratios of large numbers that's significant.

    I might do this exercise again using civilian populations and employment ratios, with the same tight 5 year age window to show similar results.

    Pundits, lobbyists seem to make up numbers as they go along.

    Reply to: A Word on Labor Participation Rates   12 years 1 month ago
    EPer:

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